


“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” —  Buddha

by Stu (stunudo)



Series: Craters [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Genderneutral, Murder, Other, Reader Insert, UnSub Reader, Unsub - Freeform, Violence, genderneutraul reader, reader unsub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 14:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15026228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stunudo/pseuds/Stu
Summary: Setting: Season 10Bold is present.Italic is future.





	“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” —  Buddha

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: Season 10  
> Bold is present.  
> Italic is future.

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”  
—

Buddha

**Dr. Reid banged on the cell door frame, getting the cops to release him. He glanced back at you over his shoulder, his eyes calculating. In that glance you saw the man behind the genius and it filled you with the first genuine glimmer of fear you had felt since you had been taken in for questioning.**

**You had no where to go and nothing to do, but wait. You resigned yourself to these simple truths and laid back down on the unforgiving cot.**

September 21, 2014

Jerry had finished digging, the sandy soil cleared away enough to finally get to work. It was an end of summer heat wave and he owed it to me to get this over with. I hadn’t slept in three days. I put on Memory from my mom’s old cassette soundtrack of the Broadway play Cats, the old boom box rattled with the volume. She wore her green dress from her forty year high school reunion and was wrapped in one of my grandmother’s quilts.

I let the song fade into the next and the next, watching the dirt fall over my mother’s body was a sight I will never forget. This miserable excuse for a friend had given my mother a heart attack and somehow convinced me to keep it a secret. We didn’t like cops and his play thing was still recovering from their wild weekend. I had no one else in the entire world but Jerry now. It made me sick to my stomach.

Eventually the sun went down and Jerry stopped letting me rewind the tape. He took the boom box back into the truck, leaving it in the bed with the shovels. I don’t remember him carrying me into the cab, but he must have since I woke up in my bed the next morning.  
______  
 **  
“Garcia? Tell me about Y/N’s mother.” Reid barked into the comm unit still live from the unsuccessful raid.**

**“Homeowner, single, mother to Y/N, uh, hello.” Garcia sputtered. “She left her job late last month because she had quote “struck it rich”. Which unless it was with a backwoods gambling operation, she did not.”**

**“My girl! Now tell me, did she quit in person or email?” Morgan crooned.**

**“Letter, like from a good, old fashioned type writer.” She replied, “The bus company scanned it into their records.”**

**“Right in line with the timeline.” Hotch muttered, pointing at the dates on the cork board.**

**“She died?!” JJ guessed.**

**“Okay, but who killed her?” Rossi prodded.**

**“Y/N or the unsub?” Callahan thought aloud.**

**“Hotch, what if this is the trigger?” Reid finally spoke up.**

**“Death of the mother would be a traumatic enough event to push even someone as mild mannered as Y/N over the edge.”**

**“But we profiled Swanson as our unsub.” Morgan challenged.**

**“But why?” Hotch replied. “Because he had ties to all of the victims?”**

**“He also has a history of violence against women.” Callahan spat.**

**“But what if it wasn’t Jerry?” Hotch countered.**

**“Jerry isn’t the unsub. He’s the motive.” Reid finished.**

September 22, 2014

I was in the kitchen just before dusk, filling the sink for dishes. We hadn’t been very good on chores over the weekend. The girl wouldn’t shut up about how sorry she was about my mom.

“That’s terrible, man. Like, I can’t get her face out of my mind. You know?” She rambled, scratching at her arms as she came down from the days long binge. I never really listened to Jerry’s girls talk for very long. Usually they didn’t like me or I zoned out long enough for them to leave me alone. This one was not getting the hint.

“Do you know when Jer’ll be back? I don’t really want to walk home.” Her voice was part whine and part cough. I ignored her and made myself a sandwich, I had an hour before I had to start my shift. If I had ever had a pet, I would have known what to do with the chick. But, I hadn’t, and my nerves were exposed wires after my mom, had, you know.

I listened to the second hand click away and counted. It was nearly seventy three seconds after her head went into the soapy water that her body stopped fighting me. But I didn’t count all the way up, I did rows of twenties. As her body fell soaking on to the floor, the purest sense of ease filled me. And I began to laugh at the little rag doll on the floor.  
__________

**Hotch, Morgan and JJ took the rooms on the ground floor as Reid, Callahan and Rossi scaled the stairs for the second floor motel rooms. The team and the locals surrounded the motel, bar and small shed, the house belonging to the unsub’s mother had turned up neither the missing Gerald Swanson or any other victims. They had yet to locate the body of the mother as well.**

**The dusty inn had many vacancies, leaving the BAU to invade only a handful of innocent people’s rooms. Morgan and Hotch had cleared the last room facing the parking lot when JJ froze.**

**“Do you hear that?” The blonde paused and the frantic rattling of metal against a hard surface met her fellow agents’ ears.**

**Derek was the first one into the attached bathroom. Hanging in the shower stall by his wrists was Jerry Swanson. His stocking feet were half soaked with a combination of his own blood and the water dripping from the shower head. His mouth had been duct taped shut.**

**“Hold on man, we got you.” Derek lifted up the lanky man to ease the strain on his shoulder sockets while JJ cut through the leather belt holding him in place.**

**Hotch hung back and called paramedics, considering how out of the way this place was, he worried it may be too late. Reid, Rossi and Callahan met at the crime scene, searching the room for evidence to use against Y/N. Reid found it on the bedside table, in small print across the generic motel notepad was a single sentence, over and over again.**

**“I will not be a bad friend anymore.”**

**“It looks like Y/N went from one to infinity on the disciplinary scale with Jerry here.” Rossi pointed out over Reid’s shoulder.**

**“The penmanship slips, I wonder how much blood he lost before he was given the task.” Spencer Reid said.**

September 30, 2014

Jerry hadn’t quite been himself lately and I knew it was my fault. I didn’t like seeing my friend down. But I didn’t say anything, I just mulled it over and over in my head. Jerry and I never really talked about feelings, just making sure we had a good time.

I just had to get Jerry to have some fun and he would be able to forget about how bad he felt about what happened to my mom. At least that is what I guessed was bothering him. You don’t just kill your best friend’s mom and forget about it, like that. Right?

Walking home the next morning I heard a car approach behind me, which was odd as they usually barely slow down and ease around. I ignored it, thinking it got turned around on the way out of town.

“Y/N?” A woman’s voice called to me. “Do you want a ride?”

It was Jerry’s ex Traci, I wasn’t raised to be rude. I glanced over my shoulder at her leaning out of the driver’s side window and nodded. I slipped into the passenger seat of her salt rusted station wagon and put on the seat belt.

“Thanks, Trace.”  
______________________

**“We found Jerry, Y/N.”**

**“Is he alright?” You asked honestly, his punishment wasn’t supposed to last this long.**

**“He’s in intensive care at the Central Hospital in Dixon.” Dr. Reid’s voice was flat. He remained defiantly outside of the holding cell. You approached him steadily, looking around to the surrounding officers in intimidation stances.**

**“That’s a good hospital, thank you.”**

**“You’re thanking me?” Dr. Reid shook his head. “You’re the one that put him in there.”**

**“Honestly, no. Jerry got himself in trouble and you folks kept me from releasing him from his punishment, yesterday.”**

**“Tell me about the girls, Y/N.”**

**“What about them?” You asked, leaning into the bars, waiting for the questions to flow freely now that you were freed from the sidestepping.**

**“You said you watched Jerry have fun with the girls. When did it go from watching to killing, Y/N?”**

**“Dr. Reid, Jerry had lots of girls over to the house. I’m not quite sure which ones you think that I killed.”**

**“Y/N, where’s the last girl? Traci Stevens, where is she?”**

**“Now, Traci I do know, cuz she was nice to me. Gave me a ride home couple a weeks ago. Even before that she was nice, she kicked Jerry out so he could come home to me.”**

**“Where is she, Y/N?”**

**“I sure don’t know, Doc-tor Reid.” His lips told you he was not amused, but his eyes looked impressed.**

**“Jerry will tell us everything we need to know, Y/N.”**

**You wanted to believe he was bluffing, but there was nothing he needed from you anymore. Nothing besides where to find Traci. It was a simple thing, but after years of giving, you were done. You shrugged, “If Jerry talks there is nothing I can do about it. I could never depend on him anyhow.”**

October 14, 2014

Jerry had picked Traci over me, in the end. He wouldn’t hurt her, even though he usually liked roughing up his lovers a bit. Making them scream, that’s why he found me such a challenge. Nothing he ever did to me got me to wail like those girls he would play with. Traci was kept in the basement since the day she gave me the ride home, for the most part Jerry was grateful.

But it was just because I hadn’t killed her, too, like the girl he was fucking when he killed my mom. I didn’t want to kill Traci, I wanted to keep Jerry home. If I had something he loved, he would be happy staying with me. I had taken away some of his used toys, but at least he still had her. Traci wasn’t supposed to die, but she must have gotten sick or something cuz she pleaded for medicine or some whisky the afternoon before I left for work.

Walking in the next morning I found Jerry strung out and Traci on the couch, he had cut her ties and let her out of her space in the corner.

“Jerry, what did you do?” I snapped my fingers trying to get him to focus.

“She’s gone. Traci’s gone. Just let me die.” He moaned.

It took me nearly all day to deal with the body, driving back to the woods where we camped during the Cranberry Festival two summers ago. I hated driving, but I kept the speed limit and Jerry told me how to get there. He was slobbering and sobbing the entire time. And I had to stop myself from yelling at him that it was all his fault. He was good to me when we buried my mom, so I tried.

After Traci was gone for good, we drove back home. I had to get cleaned up before work and Jerry had finally started to sleep off the drugs. It was just before bar close when Jerry stormed into the motel office yelling like a wild man.

“Y/N, you sick fuck. How could you?! You were supposed to be my friend.” He shoved me as I sat in the office chair, leaning half his body across the front desk. I grabbed his arm and bent it behind his back, slamming his head on to the piles of assorted fliers for local businesses.

“Eleven years you’ve been dragging me along like a lost puppy, Jerry. Whose the sick fuck? Huh? Cuz I’m finally seeing this friendship needs serious help.”

*

“Now, you’re going to hang out for awhile and think about what you’ve done.” I explained to Jerry, patting his face gently before his head lolled back to the side. I closed the door to the motel room tightly behind me and headed back to the office. I had another two hours of my shift left and still needed to clear the closing trash from the bar. The fall air had turned chilly and I hopped from foot to foot to keep warm.

“Y/N Y/L/N?” A stern voice called from the parking lot, an SUV and a squad car had appeared out of thin air.

_July 15, 2016_

_I had started from the beginning, laying my whole life out for the woman before me. She wore a sleek suit, but nothing distracting. Her eyes were blank, I couldn’t read her thoughts one way or another. I stopped trying pretty quick. I traced patterns on the table as I explained about my dad and how tough school was. She asked more questions when I got to Jerry._

_I didn’t want to talk about the bodies, but she asked round about questions and they always turned back up. After lunch and cafeteria duty, I was shown back to the visitation room. She was still here, her notebook and voice recorder set aside._

_“Y/N? Do you want to figure out why you did these things?”_

_“Ma’am?” I was confused. “Aren’t you here to research people like me?”_

_“Yes, but if I can give you some insight into why you are the way you are. Wouldn’t that be beneficial?”_

_I stared at the darker skin under her eyes, “You trying to get me to share some untold secret to help your project? Get all the recognition? You aint the first Doctor-Fed I’ve met.”_

_“So it says in your file, Dr. Spencer Reid interviewed you extensively before locating the remaining bodies and Gerald Swanson that day, almost two years ago.”_

_“Yeah? Bet it says a lot of things that seem more important than they really are.”_

_“Y/N, did you know that I work with the BAU? I work with Dr. Reid on a regular basis.”_

_This lady was messing with me, but I decided it didn’t hurt to test the waters. “Oh yeah? How’s little old Reid these days?”_

_Her eyes unfocused, “What I mean to say, Y/N. Is that if you cooperate, I’ll see if Dr. Reid will accompany me on my next visit.”_

_“You know what Dr. Lewis? I suddenly remember there WAS a fifth girl.”_

_“I thought so. What can you tell me about her?”_

_Feds, eating up anything you shoved in front of them. Maybe Dr. Reid wasn’t rid of me yet._


End file.
